Theological works on Heaven and Hell have been varied and many. From Dante’s Divine Comedy to John Milton’s Paradise Lost, many of these great works have enveloped our fears about Hell, and our ideas of Heaven, with differing thematic emphases. Amazingly, Lewis does the same thing with The Great Divorce, with barely more than 100 pages.

The camera slowly fades in to reveal a swirling, black hole. A storm brews at its epicenter. Lightning flashes. Thunder claps like a heartbeat. The camera pans out to reveal Qohen Leth (a subdued, monk-like Christoph Waltz) naked and facing the black hole intently, but also removed, a tad detached as if lost in a trance. The black hole simultaneously represents Qohen’s fears and metaphysical yearning. This is the beginning of the potentially interesting yet ultimately shallow “Zero Theorem”.